Saturday, August 16, 2014

It
was time. God had spoken and the hour had finally come when they would start
walking into their inheritance. Yes, they would have to fight for it, but what
should that matter if the Lord Himself was fighting for them? Victory was as
certain as the rising and the setting of the sun each day, for, after all, it
was the One who had set the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser
light to govern the night, who had set the stars in their places and appointed
times and seasons, it was this same God who had spoken to him and told him that
he would lead these people to inherit the land. When god spoke, the world came
into being; when God spoke the descendants of Abraham would inherit the land.

But
tonight was a night for memories, for he knew that what he was about to do was
part of a story that had started long before he was born and that would continue
long after he was gone, which would include his children’s childrens’ children
for untold generations. It had started when God had called out childless Father
Abraham from the land of the pagans, called him out to be the father of a great
nation (though his wife was barren) and to inherit a land which he had never
seen. Eventually he had a child, Isaac, but the only portion of the land which
he ever owned was the grave plot of his wife. Isaac, and, after him, his son
Jacob, and then Jacob’s twelve sons had been sojourners in the land, until the
famine had led to their relocation to Egypt, where Jacob’s son Joseph had been
sent by God before them to prepare the way. And there the descendants of
Abraham had flourished until Pharaoh grew so afraid of their numbers that he
enslaved them, until the cries of their oppression went up to God, and in the
fullness of time He sent them Moses, the Deliverer.

And
this was where Joshua’s own story had begun. He had been one of that nation of liberated
slaves who had followed Moses after the fatal night of the Passover, and
experienced the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, and stood at the foot of
Sinai, where God called them to be a nation set apart, holy to Himself. He knew
that God was the Almighty Redeemer of His people. So he had been thrilled when he was chosen as one
of the twelve spies to go and find out about the land they had been promised.

That was when he discovered that
most of his fellow spies (in fact all of them except faithful, courageous Caleb)
still had the hearts of slaves. Their bodies may have been rescued from Egypt,
but they still carried the oppressor’s yoke in their hearts, believing
themselves helpless and refusing to take hold of the freedom God had given
them. Where he and Caleb saw amazing richness, a land flowing with milk and
honey, they saw only insurmountable difficulties. They were too afraid to take
hold of the inheritance God was giving them.

And so the Lord waited forty years for a new generation
to arise, a generation born in freedom and dependent on their God. These were
the people Joshua was about to lead into the Promised Land, so that they might
claim their inheritance at last.

Tuesday, August 05, 2014

This is the first post of a long-term project: I want to work my way through the whole of Luke's gospel, passage by passage, as a set of reflective poems -- not a theological commentary, per se, but as a set of personal responses. Some will be direct reflections on the text, others will be my own reactions to the text. Anyway, I will doubtless refine the project further in the writing of it!

Monday, August 04, 2014

He climbed slowly up the
mountain, knowing it was the last mountain he would ever climb. And there had
been so many, so much climbing. Long ago there had been the slight hills of
Egypt, where one had stood to watch the slaves labouring away on Pharaoh’s
latest crazy building project. There had been the steep places he had crossed
when he fled Egypt, and the hill he had just come over when he saw, ahead of
him, the bush that burned but was not consumed. He often pondered that bush,
seeking to understand the mind of God through the symbols He used to
communicate. Only now did he wonder if perhaps he himself was perhaps that bush
– inhabited by the very glory of God, and driven by Him to actions he himself
would never have imagined, nor thought himself able to accomplish, and yet,
never eaten away by that inhabiting glory. He remained himself, whatever mighty
wind the Lord breathed through him, and that, in itself was a marvel, utterly
different from man-made explanations of the way gods worked.

There was the hill, too, where he
had stood above the battle against the Amalekites with his hands raised in
prayer, until he grew so weary that Aaron and Hur had to hold his hands up for
him. And the Israelites, led by Joshua, had prevailed, because his prayers had
prevailed. And now he felt the weariness of his approaching end, and with it a
great peace. There would be no more battles, and no more mountains, it was
Joshua’s turn now to lead the free children of slaves into the glory of the
promise, to fight against all kinds of evil and teach them to follow the God
who called them home. Once it had hurt him terribly to know that, by his
presumption, he had forfeited his own right to enter the Promised Land, but now
he no longer minded. He had done his
part, and it was enough, and now, once more, he could be alone with the God who
had called him. The Promised Land was precious, but he had met with the One who
gave the Promise, who was, in Himself, the fulfilment and meaning of every good
promise that had ever been made. It was time to move from the symbols and the
tokens into the True Reality, and, step by step, as he climbed, he felt as i9f
his heart was making its own pilgrimage back home. It was time to be done with
the busyness and clamour.

And he thought then, of the
greatest mountain he had climbed, more times than he could now remember, Sinai,
where, while the people below him trembled in terror, he had walked up into the
very presence of God. Even now he had no words for that encounter, only a
memory of such glory that all his tears were turned to rainbows, the sign of
God’s mercy to man. He had walked with God, and in the tent of meeting he had
talked with God face to face, as a man talks to his friend. And now there was
no terror in the approach of death, it was no harder than walking to a friend’s
house and accepting their hospitality contented gratitude. God would take care
of the rest

About Me

Mother of two grown up kids,and very long time married, after many years as a full-time mum, then a part-time theological student I'm now trying to be useful in my local church whilst working out what the next step is.I'm passionate about Jesus, treasure the people in my life and dream of being a preacher. I'm a would-be poet, a slightly eccentric cook, and an INFP (which must explain something).
And I'm a pickle: a weird shaped lump of something-or-other, a bit salty, a bit sweet, definitely an acquired taste, preserved by the grace of God and trying to add a bit of flavour to the blandness of modern life.